The Slowcoach | Page 7

week, and can stand in the old coach house until
you are ready to set forth on the discovery of your native land. I should
have liked also to have added a horse and a man; but you must do that
and keep an account of what everything costs, and let me know when I
come back from abroad. I shall expect some day a long account of your
adventures, and if you keep a logbook, so much the better.
"I am, "Your true, if unsettling, friend,
"X.
"P.S.--You will find a use for the enclosed key sooner or later, and if
you want to write to me, address the letter to 'X., care of Smithurst and
Wynn, Lincoln's Inn Fields, W.C.'"
For a while after the letter was finished the Avories were too excited
and thoughtful to speak, while as for the Rotherams and Horace
Campbell, however they may have tried, they could not disguise an
expression, if not exactly of envy, certainly of disappointment. There
was no X. in their family.
"May we really go away in it and discover England?" Robert asked.
"I suppose so," said Mrs. Avory.

"Then that makes Sea View all right," said Gregory. "Because this will
do instead."
The poor Rotherams! Sea View had suddenly become tame and almost
tiresome.
Mrs. Avory saw their regrets in their faces, and cheered them up by the
remark that the caravan must sometimes be lent to others.
"Oh, yes," said Janet.
"Do you think Dr. Rotheram would let you go? " she asked Mary.
"Of course he would," said Jack. "But I wish it was a houseboat."
The suggestion was so idiotic that everyone fell on him in scorn.
"But who is X.?" Mrs. Avory asked.
The letter was written in a round office hand that told nothing. Mr.
Scott was the most likely person, but why should Mr. Scott hide? He
never had done such a thing. Or Mr. Lenox? But neither was it his way
to be secret and mysterious. Nor was it Uncle Christopher's.
When, however, you have a caravan given you, and it is standing there
waiting to be explored, the question who gave it or did not give it
becomes unimportant.
Gregory put the case in a nutshell. "Never mind about old X. now," he
said. "Let's make a thorough examination!"
CHAPTER 3
: THE THOROUGH EXAMINATION
It was a real caravan. That is to say, either gypsies might have lived in
it, or anyone that did live in it would soon be properly gipsified. It was
painted in gay colours, and had little white blinds with very neat waists
and red sashes round them. That is the right kind of caravan. The brown

caravans highly varnished are wrong: they may be more luxurious, but
no gypsy would look at them.
The body of it was green--a good apple green--and the panels were
lined with blue. Some people say that blue and green won't go together;
but don't let us take any notice of them. Just look at the bed of
forget-me-nots, or a copse of bluebells; or, for that matter, try to see the
Avories' caravan. The window frames and bars were white. The spokes
and hubs of the wheels were red. It was most awfully gay.
Inside--but the inside of a caravan is so exciting that I hardly know how
to hold my pen. The inside of a caravan! Can you imagine a better
phrase than that? I can't. If Coleridge's statement is true that poetry is
the best words in the best order, then that is the best poem: the inside of
a caravan!
The caravan was sixteen feet six inches long and six feet two inches
high inside. From the ground it stood ten feet. It was six feet four
inches wide. If you measure these distances in the dining room, you
will see how big it was, and you will be able to imagine yourselves in
it.
The woodwork was all highly varnished, and very new and clean. More
than halfway down the caravan were heavy curtains hanging across it,
and behind these was the bedroom, containing four beds, two on each
wall, on hinged shelves, that could be let down flat against the wall-by
day, when the folding chairs could be unfolded, and the bedroom then
became a little boudoir.
The floor space was, however, filled this afternoon with great bundles
which turned out to be gypsy tents and sleeping sacks. "For the boys
and Kink to sleep in," said Janet; "but we must be very careful about
waterproof sheeting on the ground first."
The rest of the caravan, between the door and the bedroom--about ten
feet--was the kitchen and living room. Here every inch of the wall was
used, either by chairs that folded back like